... the proposal calls for severe across-the-board cuts as the action-forcing device - cuts affecting Democratic domestic priorities, including Medicare, but also about 50 percent would come from defense spending, which is a major priority for many Republicans.
Considering that defense is only 20% of the budget, with 80% being everything else, this means draconian cuts from defense and trivial amounts from everything else.
I did some "back of envelope" numbers:
If the ceiling rises $2,400 billion, that leaves $1,500 billion of "across the board cuts." If half of those come from defense that's $750 billion over 10 years. The 2010 defense budget was $664 billion including "overseas contingency operations."
In other words, worst case, it's the equivalent of defense getting $0 in ONE of the next 10 years. That sounds terrible but to look at it another way, it's only $75 billion off per year.
However that's more than the baseline increase for at least half those 10 years.
This could be a genuine cut upfront in defense spending.
If the defense budget grew only at baseline levels (7.5%) it would only be $125 billion below where it would otherwise be 10 years from now (roughly $1,267 trillion vs $1,342 trillion) and it looks like in the last 4 years of that 10 the $75 billion would be less than the baseline increase.
If those defense cuts excludes the "war savings" Reid tried to call "cuts," the picture may be much bleaker for defense.
The details really matter here.
I'd expect Democrats to claim it's a relatively small cut, entirely reasonable, by emphasizing the $75 billion. Conversely I'd expect neocons to go the "it's like defense gets $0 for a whole year" route in rhetoric.